Larry Ellison, president and co-founder of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld 2017 conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | fake images
Oracle announced Monday that it intends to join a new federally backed medical network that will make it easier for clinics, hospitals and insurance companies to share patient data.
The network, called Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA, launched in December. Oracle, which acquired medical records giant Cerner for $28 billion in 2022, is the latest major vendor to back TEFCA, joining its main rival, Epic Systems.
Oracle needs to be approved to join TEFCA, but its interest in doing so helps bolster the nascent network's credibility. It also suggests that TEFCA may succeed in ushering in a new standard for data sharing practices across the healthcare industry.
Sharing medical records between different hospitals, clinics, and healthcare organizations is a notoriously complex process. Healthcare data is stored in a variety of formats across dozens of different providers, making it difficult for doctors and other providers to easily access all relevant data about their patients.
“This is just the natural next step,” Seema Verma, executive vice president and CEO of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, told CNBC in an interview. “We don't like to block information. We don't have that reputation.”
Oracle competitor Epic has long been accused of dragging its feet on interoperability efforts, and Oracle hasn't been afraid to call out the company. In a May blog post, Ken Glueck, executive vice president at Oracle, wrote: “Everyone in the industry understands that Epic CEO Judy Faulkner is the biggest hurdle for EHRs. [electronic health record] interoperability.”
“Epic hopes that today's announcement from Oracle Health indicates that they are finally ready to get serious about interoperability and to deliver the technology that patients and providers deserve instead of making false and distracting claims,” Epic said in a statement on Monday.
Several companies and organizations have previously attempted to simplify healthcare information sharing, but TEFCA was designed to help bring all of these players together on a national scale. The ultimate goal of the network is to finally standardize the legal and technical requirements for sharing patient data.
The main groups participating in health data sharing through TEFCA are called qualified health information networks or QHINs. These networks participate voluntarily (they receive no remuneration) and must go through a two-step approval process to ensure they are eligible and have the necessary technical infrastructure.
Oracle said Monday it will begin the process to become a QHIN. Seven QHINs, including Epic, are already active within TEFCA.
